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Bay Area history hikes

Long before technology's Next New Thing, the Bay Area gave rise to a different sort of entrepreneurial spirit, when ranchers, fishermen, miners and loggers tested their wits against Mother Nature.

Though they are long gone, proof their successes -- and failures -- can be seen in the landscape that surrounds us. Springtime, that most ephemeral of seasons, offers the perfect excuse to take a hike and explore our enduring past.

Mining

Wilderness is slowly reclaiming the once-bustling hills of San Jose's Almaden Quicksilver Park, which at its heyday in the 1870s was home to seven mines and up to 3,000 residents. The mercury they excavated helped fuel California's Gold Rush by allowing gold to be separated from ore.

A deer along the Mine Hill Trail at Quicksilver Park in San Jose, Calif., on April 14. (Nhat V. Meyer/San Jose Mercury News)

The park's Mine Hill Trail is the route of one of the old mining roads. It takes you up to the San CristÃ³bal Mine entrance, still visible behind a gate. Further along is a powder house, once used to store mining explosives, then the traces of a railroad trestle, where ore cars would dump precious ore into a chute. Remnants of a rotary furnace can still be seen along the trail. En route, you'll traverse Cornish miners' long-gone village of Englishtown and the place where Mexicans lived in Spanishtown.

History can also be admired at the park's Casa Grande, built as a home for mine manager Gen. Henry Wagner Halleck and featured in Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Angle of Repose." Nearby is the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum, rich with history and artifacts.

Cattle have roamed Briones Regional Park ever since 1829, when Felipe Briones built a home near what is now the Bear Creek entrance to the park and grazed longhorns. Hay and grain were also grown in this fertile Bear Creek watershed.

Today, just a few miles off Highway 24 between Berkeley and Walnut Creek, humans and cows still share the grassy hills and secluded canyons of this lovely 6,116-acre park.

For a cool and leafy walk, ascend Alhambra Creek Trail. The top offers panoramic views of the Diablo Valley. Nearby Briones Crest Trail takes you to the park's highest point, 1,480-foot Briones Peak, or to the Sindicich Lagoons, lined with green sedges and willows.

Native American tribes of Ohlone, Carguin and Miwok once navigated the shores of San Francisco Bay in vessels made of tules to gather clams, mussels, crab, salmon and other fishes. Then the marshes were diked to harvest sea salt for a burgeoning urban population. Now holes have been notched in the salt ponds, creating the largest tidal wetland restoration project.

The windswept and sun-drenched shoreline can be explored along levee-top trails edging seven salt ponds. Grab a bike, leave your car at the Alviso Marina County Park and enjoy the 9-mile-long Alviso Slough Loop Trail. For walkers, there's a shorter route along a boardwalk, with interpretive panels.

On the Hacienda Trail at Quicksilver Park in San Jose, Calif., on April 14. (Nhat V. Meyer/San Jose Mercury News)

Another new addition to the bay front explorations is East Palo Alto's Cooley Landing Park. Situated on a man-made peninsula jutting out into the bay, the strollable site was once a secluded location to repair boats. Now, its wetland habitat is being restored to serve as a breeding ground for the endangered clapper rail.

Loggers viewed a redwood tree as a giant fortune on a stick, yielding enough timber to build five houses. With few notable exceptions -- such as ancient groves in Big Basin Redwoods and Henry Cowell state parks -- our local parks are dominated by second and third-growth forests.

The most vivid example is San Mateo County's El Corte Madera Creek Open Space Preserve, where eight to 15 sawmills engaged in the most feverish logging in the region. Spanish for "the woodcutting place," the preserve's legacy can be seen in the many "fairy rings" of baby redwoods that encircle ancient stumps, and the old logging roads that are now so popular with bicyclists.

Hike along the Gordon Mill Trail to experience life along a former haul road, then complete "The Redwood Loop" along the Sierra Morena, Methuselah, Giant Slamander and Timberview trails.

To see what's been lost, visit a surviving giant, perhaps spared because of its many knobs and bumps. Just across from the park entrance on Skyline Boulevard, take a small trail down to visit the magnificent "Methuselah Tree," estimated to be 1,800 years old.

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